


On the bottom of this well

by Kat2107



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hera is boss, Kanan has problems, Mentions of Order 66 and the aftermath, Possible alcoholism, Unrequitted Love, snippets of life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 15:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5381003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat2107/pseuds/Kat2107
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inside Kanan Jarrus live the broken remnants of Caleb Dume, a broken 14 year old whose only survival mechanism is 'don't let them know'<br/>Half the time the only thing keeping him together is his Captain.<br/>Force only knows how he deserves Hera Syndulla.<br/>He doesn't, but she's there anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the bottom of this well

**Author's Note:**

> This is set about 6 months after Gorse with Kanan still finding his footing.  
> I wanted a look at the first time he opened up to Hera, seeing how his only reaction n A New Dawn was basically: Don't talk about it.  
> He obviously has and Hera does know a few things about Kanan's past that the other crew members don't, so, here's the fic.

Kanan Jarrus was a man with problems.

Well, maybe not problems exactly. They were more like quirks... he knew people who had problems after all.

 

There was a guy he had flown for in Hutt space who had fallen into a near catatonic state every time he had seen someone wear bright green.

Compared to that, Kanan’s quirks barely qualified.

It was Hera who insisted that his habit of not caring for the names of their current planet was disconcerting.

In Kanan’s opinion it wasn’t worth the effort. Not like any of these “wretched hives of scum and villainy”  differed from each other.

Dingy bars, scared citizens and shady gangs… the drinks’ names changed, but that was about as surprising as it got.

Kanan could immerse himself into any of them with seamless ease.

 

This was where ‘Kanan Jarrus’ belonged; where he came from.

 

Once, years ago, a kid with more bravado than common sense had peppered his teacher with questions about each of the planets where duty had taken them. He had learned anything there was to learn, absorbed each tidbit of information like a sponge, no matter how obscure.

He had done so with joy.

 

Now Kanan watched Hera’s back, literally, as she leaned closer to the Besalisk on the other side of the corner table.

 

It reminded him of Gorse. Too much, if he was honest with himself.

And considering how Gorse had ended that was not exactly a good sign.

Having a bad feeling was never a good thing when you had the Force breathing down your neck. Kanan took a swig of the stale beer in front of him and noted with regret how little alcohol it contained.

 

No alcohol on an op. A job; he corrected himself. Kanan Jarrus didn’t do ops anymore.

Kanan Jarrus had brought himself as far away from that as possible without turning to the other side of legality and Hera Syndulla--blessed be her far too good heart--went along with it.

 

They both knew why she had extended the invitation to him. She didn’t need another moonjockey to keep her company and flirt with her while she plotted the downfall of the Empire.

She needed someone who was able to anticipate the enemy closing in on them.

Kanan was her one second advantage.

And in turn, she gave him the chance to feel less of a total failure to…

Kanan twisted his thoughts under control with another swig of his beer and the viciousness of long experience. Hera knew. For good and for bad Hera knew.

She never asked him. She accepted his closed wall policy of not talking until it went away without complaint. She never requested tricks, never requested more than he could give, relying on his willingness to pull the Force out of his sleeve as a last ditch effort with far too much trust.

Because, truth be told, Kanan was not willing.

 

And then he looked up, across the bar and found her sitting, her small hands planted firmly onto the scarred surface of the cheap plast table, and warmth settled in his stomach at the thought that she knew.

 

For better or for worse, Hera Syndulla knew him.

 

Another swig from the bottle, the now empty bottle.They were on a backwater moon, meeting with some shady rust bucket pilot, whom Hera swore had information on a prisoner transport, that they needed to intercept. Business as usual.

 

The moon was a dirty underbelly with a thin veneer of an imperial spaceport, a barely used reloading point for optic crystals from the underground mines of the system’s third planet.

All in all the system had a swooping population of twenty five thousand workers to which starport city provided the entertainment facilities. So maybe Kanan had indeed read the exposé when Hera had been sleeping, memorized the most important points just so he had something he could will himself to forget again later on.

Which was not a memory exercise, but replacement therapy because of course he had to go and promise Hera not to get drunk anymore. And now he was stuck with beer.

If there was one rule about drinking anywhere in the galaxy it was that you could totally fuck up beer, but you could never fuck up hooch.

Whatever they were serving here, Corellian ale it was not.

But still…

Seeing Hera safe and in deep conversation with her contact, he decided to go for another.

The counter was only ten steps away and the crowd as easy as they got. Boringly so.

 

Kanan had barely left his table when the front door crashed open. At first he discounted the Sullustan in the doorframe. At a second glance at his heavy breathing, the sweat coating his face, Kanan suspected a fight might be coming his way. Not exactly an unwelcome prospect.

At third glance the Solustan fell forward, a smoking, fist sized blaster hole in his back and all hell broke lose.

 

There were words Kanan really, truly hated.

“In the name of the Empire…” ranked right up there with “Kanan, we need to get involved.”

On the periphery of his vision Hera was already moving.

With a quick nod to her he turned towards the front door, just an unsuspecting patron caught in an unfortunate situation.

 

Hera spirited her contact towards the back door while Kanan moved to block the way.

Between dozens of people running around, yelling over each other, it was not difficult to cut the sightline between front door and the back exit.

 

If this was a raid then they’d be fucked. There would be Stormtroopers guarding the alley that crossed to the main street behind the building. Contingency plan was for Hera to make her way to the spaceport and start up the Ghost, Kanan hot on her trail with enough distance to divert attention.

It was the best they had been able to come up with. Elaborate plans needed elaborate possibilities.

 

There was nothing elaborate about Thanvein III.

 

‘Oops,’ Kanan thought, as he physically pushed a Rodian out of the way.

So, he remembered the name.

Backing through the now rowdy crowd he ducked behind a beer stained table to see Hera shove the Besalisk into a door that clearly said “Ladies”. Well, if someone was able to get a six-armed brute through a window barely wide enough for herself, it was Hera. Kanan heard the Stormtroopers closing in towards the pub and, with a prayer that this was them just chasing a pickpocket, he ducked into small hallway marked “private”.

 

The last time he had climbed out a toilet window he had been a head smaller and only half as broad around the shoulders. The stone frame squeezed painfully across his ribs until only his synthleather jacket prevented the bruises from turning into bloody scratches. It took him almost a minute to shimmy through the tight opening.

 

The ladies room window opened to the back of the building and into a tiny alleyway.

The men’s room was on one of the small sides of the building, shaded by two dumpsters at least. There was a crowd to Kanan’s right, attentively watching whatever the Stormtroopers were doing around the corner. Not a raid then, a chase.

 

Bad for the Sullustan, good for them.

 

Kanan turned left and almost made it. He came so close to turning the saving corner out of sight. Close sadly only counted with Force throws, thermal detonators and orbital laser bombardment.

 

Kanan hated people yelling “In the name of the Empire!”

 

***

 

He lost them three streets later, cheating an escape route over the roofs of a nearby transport depot. Climbable dumpsters always were the common criminal’s friend; even more so your run-of-the-mill rebel’s.

 

Near the spaceport the streets were as calm as they always were. Nobody tried to stop him as he made his way towards bay 6. No Stormtroopers, no thugs. Kanan almost dared believe that for once luck was on his side.

Right up until the moment when he turned into the Ghost’s docking bay, the ship’s engines already warming, a faint, almost homely glow, greeting him.

 

Kanan had been sure he had lost them. He had been absolutely convinced there was nobody behind him. He had not checked in the Force.

 

Because Kanan Jarrus didn’t do that.

 

The first blaster bolt sizzled past him with a meter wide margin of error. The second hit the crate at the docking bay entrance.

 

“Ghost for Spectre 1,” he hailed Hera, only to dodge behind a stack of shipping containers the moment her tense, yet oh so calm answer came.

 

“This is Ghost. We’re ready for take off, so move it!”

 

“I’d love to, but I don’t think they’ll just let me hobble up the loading ramp.”

 

“Then run, love.” The warmth of her voice wrapped around his heart, coaxing a smile onto his face. “If anyone can do it, it’s you, Spectre 1.”

 

It was her trust that always dared him. And his own helpless devotion to her that had him actually follow through. Heck, it was only two, wait, five Stormtroopers on a moon that was so provincial, that calling it provincial was an insult to the province. This was where the Empire sent its cast offs and the kids too inexperienced to be useful.

Fifty metres. A refreshing sprint for a human; and that was all he was...

 

Just a man.

 

Not someone who could actually jump that distance if he really, really tried. Or had any inclination to do so.

 

So he ran.

 

He crossed the first twenty with no blaster bolts coming even close. It was only as he had to run straight for another ten, any evasive path hindered by the haphazardly piled goods that cluttered the whole hanger, that the low hum in the back of his mind exploded into a warning vibration.

 

Kanan dropped and tucked his body into a tight ball before he hit the ground and two blaster shots sizzled above his head. Rolling over, he brought his feet under him, pushing back up with practiced ease.

Just like yet another tavern brawl, except the fists were energy bolts.

There was no denying it: he was indeed superior. The secret was not to show it. Turning, just because a hunch was persistently tugging at the back of his brain, Kanan saw the discharge blaze of yet another blaster shot.

 

Time stood still.

 

At the back of his head a screaming need to just jump five meters pumped in a relentless rhythm and he pondered for the fraction of a second to just go with it.

 

With the traction the shot had it would hit him at chest height. Right side. If he bent now, pulled back his arm…No major damage, his brain whispered and the Force yelled at him to not be a bloody idiot.

Time flowed in sirupy rivulets around him, caging him, enabling him, coaxing, cajoling whispers of the Force in his mind. One push, one twist and his body would curl around the blaster bolt. He could have three shots of his own off before the Stormtroopers even noticed. He could have them unconscious on the ground before they even had a chance to blink.

Kanan Jarrus angled his body and cursed his life choices.

 

The blaster bolt carved a burning path over his ribs and Kanan felt bone creak and then give in as the kinetic energy hit fully. But he would live yet another time and nobody would know.

 

Cursing as he crashed to his knees he tucked his right arm to his body, the blaster angled up just enough to get an approximate direction. One shot. Two. Not very well aimed, but they were enough to have the Stormtroopers take cover. Then he ran again.

 

He rounded the last stack of crates and what only moments ago had been his biggest obstacle was now his saving grace as the Stormtroopers’ line of sight was cut.

 

“Hurry!” Hera’s voice spurred him on, the worry in her voice, the care, balm on the pain in his side.

 

The cockpit was on the other side, so, with some luck, she didn’t know. And please, Force, for once be on my side, he prayed as the loading ramp rumbled shut behind him.

 

She wanted Caleb Dume, but all she got was Kanan Jarrus. In the last six months, while she never once mentioned it beyond a curious glance, Kanan had dreaded this one conversation when Hera finally would run out of patience and confront him about all the things he just didn’t want to talk about.

 

Kanan took a moment to lean against the loading bay wall and caught his breath.

His side burned like fire. A deep welt carved its way through jumper and skin below and he was pretty sure he could make out a bit of muscle flexing, but that was probably - hopefully - just his imagination.

 

It was one deep breath then he was moving again.

 

“I’ll take the turret!” He yelled to Hera, unclenching his teeth long enough to push the words through.

 

The answer, if it even came, was already lost to the painful rush of blood and Adrenalin in his ears. They were not out of the woods yet and he wouldn’t step in front of her bleeding and with two fractured ribs.

Hera knew him, but she didn’t understand. Not truly.

 

All who could were dead.

 

***

 

It was long past midnight on the Ghost’s internal cycle when Kanan finally gave in.

He was shivering, the atmosphere far too cold for a man whose body had just decided he was an idiot.

Lying in bed was officially impossible; the slightest touch to his right set the wound aflame. On the other hand it was the only position in which his abused ribs found any comfort.

So yes, retreating without treating the wound had been a gloriously stupid idea and if Master Bi…

 

He cut that thought with a curse.

 

Kanan hadn’t wanted to upset Hera. Hadn’t wanted her to know-- priority had been getting away anyways. And in light of the two TIEs that had followed them into the sky Kanan’s place had been in the turret.

 

And afterwards….

 

It had already been too late to get away without a tongue lashing by his captain and Kanan truly had believed that his body would take care of the injury the way it usually did: by drawing on the living Force, no input necessary.

 

When he had fled to his cabin with an excuse so flimsy it was a miracle Hera had bought it, it had truly been too late to get out of this without repercussions.

What had seemed reasonable arguments then, seemed so much less so now as Kanan let his feet drop out of bed, praying for enough momentum to get him upright.

 

With the Ghost safely parked on an asteroid and Hera in bed - yes, he was a coward - it was time to get help of the painkiller and bacta variety.

 

The ship’s corridor lights were dimmed to bearest minimum, the galley lights turned off altogether. Hera always kept the temperature below normal to avoid detection through their energy signature, but she took it to extremes in parking. Kanan concurred. There was no reason to tempt a random passing pirate or worse, the Empire.

 

Finding his way through the dark galley was not difficult. This extraordinary sense of spatial awareness was just yet another thing that came with being him, whether he wanted it or not. Kanan Jarrus simply did not run into furniture.

 

Until he did.

 

The collision with the Dejarik table table send a jarring jolt of pain through his side, the gasp of pain escaping him before he clamped his teeth on his tongue, hyperventilating through the aftershocks.

 

He swayed in the darkness, his mind blanking in and out of conscious decision making for a few seconds. It wasn’t the pain, his mind worked through the pain. But somehow his body tried fighting the wound so hard that it neglected other essential functions.

Like balance. Or concentration.

 

"Welcome to dumb decision making 101, Jarrus,” he cursed himself, but the words barely registered past the rush of blood in his ears.

 

He really shouldn’t have waited.

 

It took him far longer than it should have to carry the relatively light first aid kit to the table.

Kanan had not bothered with a shirt to begin with and that was good news...the only good news. He contemplated swallowing the pills dry and found himself staring at the hapless lumps of pressed white powder for almost a minute before he caught himself.

 

He was an idiot.

 

“You are an idiot, Kanan.”

 

“Yeah,” he agreed before the thought filtered. “What?!”

 

The lights in the galley blazed to life as his head shot up, finding Hera with her arms crossed two steps left of the door.

 

“When did you…?” He cleared his parched throat. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

 

“Because I didn’t,” she snorted, her lovely lips pulled into a mix between a sad smile and a sneer.

 

Hera pushed off the wall and moved through the room with cool efficiency, sink to cupboard, cupboard to table, a glass of water in her hand. If she were cruel, she’d drink it now, while he watched.

Thank the F… stars, Hera wasn’t cruel. She set it down, right next to the pills and brushed a gentle hand over Kanan’s tousled hair.

 

“I wanted to see how long it took you,” she said, standing next to him like a looming threat or a guardian.

 

“You knew…”

 

“Of course I knew, Kanan! This is my ship” Her voice was incredulous, but softened right away. “And you are my crew.”

 

“I didn’t want to…” Kanan didn’t know how he wanted to finish that sentence. Hurt you… Worry you… Be a drag…?

 

All fit, yet none did.

 

In the grand scheme of things Kanan Jarrus had been alone for almost ten years and sometimes things were easier alone. Until they weren’t.

 

“Do you really think I have no rear surveillance?” she snorted and Kanan just kept himself from flinching.

 

“I kinda hoped you didn’t,” he murmured and flicked the pills into his mouth then washed them down with the water.

 

He almost spit them out again when Hera brushed careful fingertips over his shoulder.

“You’re feverish,” she said.

 

Kanan barely heard her above the feel of cool, elegant fingers flattening on his skin. Maybe she did say more, but as his eyes drifted close and he leaned into the touch for a moment there nothing mattered.

 

“Kanan?”

 

I took him a few seconds to speak. “What?”

“Do you want help?”

 

Kanan looked up, found her gaze again, her smile, and scooted over to make room for her on the bench.

 

***

 

"This looks bad." Hera's voice pulled Kanan out of the pleasant stupor the painkillers had gentled him into a while ago, sprawled half over the Dejarik table with his head resting comfortably on his uninjured arm.

 

The other was stretched limply above his head, giving Hera's nimble fingers access to the gash in his side.

 

"It's superficial," he mumbled as much out of reflex as it was to assuage the worry in her voice.

Hera wrinkled her nose. "I can see your ribs, love,"

 

Well, there was that…

 

“Why didn’t you evade?” she said and Kanan heard a faint accusation below the worry.

 

Her fingers slathered Bacta over the wound, carefully avoiding the sensitive edges nonetheless.

Because she was Hera and she wasn’t cruel. Much. Not with injuries.

 

“Trust me,” he murmured and scratched his beard, barely lifting his head off his arm. “They aimed for my heart.”

 

Hera’s fingers stilled and Kanan could feel her gaze on him; he didn’t need the Force for that. Hera Syndulla was a bloodhound, her ability to cut through people’s bullshit right to their lies and their worst fear, was almost as great as her piloting skills. A part inside Kanan woke to panicked alertness, screaming at him to run, he on other hand wanted to curl up and cry. Or die.

Whatever hurt less.

 

“You could have gotten away, could you not?” Of course she didn’t just retreat.

 

“Yeah,” Kanan mumbled, closing his eyes again; because in the end, for better or worse, Hera Syndulla knew.

 

“Why didn’t you?”

 

The wish to just fall asleep with her hands on his skin almost overwhelmed the panic. Because this was Hera and Kanan Jarrus was an idiot when it came to Hera, that alone was reason enough to push up on his good arm and look at her.

 

“Because the moment anybody sees me do anything even remotely smelling of Force usage, I will become one of the most hunted men in the galaxy.”

 

He wasn’t even angry. But he could have done with something to drink.

 

“Had those guys seen me do anything, not only I, but you and your ship would be on every Empire outpost’s shitlist.”

Turning hurt. Kanan did it anyways. Short of packing his stuff and running there were few options at this point. He was tired of running.

 

“We could have dealt with them Kanan,” Hera’s gaze hit him, full of idealism, full of so much hope that it was enough for both of them.

 

And full of ice cold determination to protect her crew. Him. No matter what.

It might have been enough for him, had there not been a bottomless pit in his soul where once Depa Billaba had resided and next to her his friends and brothers who had tried to kill him.

 

“It’s not just them, Hera. It’s everybody! Some squatter. Some stupid kid who doesn’t know better. Someone who walks past the door at the wrong moment. You can’t just keep something like the Force on a casual basis. With the Force it’s always all or nothing and damn if you die for it.” The bitterness in his own words tastes stale. He had thought these words so many times, cursed it all to hell and wished it gone so many times that it was a familiar refrain by now. Though the reality of saying it aloud, of speaking the words, calling it what it was… The Force...

He reached out then, to encompass a whole world in his words, but that was before his side exploded in pain at the movement and he crumbled. Her hand steadied him at once. So familiar, so safe.

 

Hera Syndulla would not betray him.

 

He knew that as surely as he knew his names. Question was, could she let it go. Say, they maybe could deal with Stormtroopers who saw him, but what about the others? Bystanders. Accidental victims of a bad luck they never signed up for? Caleb Dume, who never seemed to be able to just stay out of his life answered that question, before Kanan had even finished thinking.

 

“You can’t just murder people in cold blood, simply because they saw the wrong thing. That’s not the way of the…”

 

Kanan clamped his mouth shut, Hera’s hand on his shoulder suddenly burning.

 

“The way of the…?”

 

“Hera…,” Kanan closed his eyes and shook his head. “Let it be. I can’t.”

 

Kanan could hear the sadness of her smile in her voice, thick dripping with that far too good heart of hers, the hope she wore like armor and that never could have stopped a blaster.

 

“I am not trying to convince you to do anything.” Her hand on his shoulder didn’t move. “But I need to know where your boundaries lie. If only to step in instead of letting you fight it out because I know that you could handle it, if you only tried.”

 

For better or for worse, Hera knew.

But she didn’t know everything. Not even half of it.

 

Kanan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Just for one moment he opened his senses and let them be flooded. A gentle touch. A soft caress. The warm blanket of Hera’s care for him. Around him the ship and space. Light years of safe and empty space. First the upper rib clicked into place, then the lower. Pain welled up and was washed away. Out into the darkness of space, flushed out by the long,  slow exhale that carried his words.

 

“The Jedi.”

 

As the words reverberated between them, Kanan shuddered with the sudden onslaught of emotion. It was like a dam had shattered and it contained all the things he had drunk into oblivion since the day he had taken off with Janus Kasmir’s ship.

Coruscant. The temple. His friends. Master Billaba. Grey and Styles and the war.

 

Kaller.

 

The Force hammered against the back of his conscious with the power of a Tattooine sandstorm. Kanan shut it down.

All of it: the pain, fear. The memories that no 15 year old should have made; the childish hope and heroism. But most of all the pain, until only relief remained.

 

***

 

He came to, to his own surprise, with his face buried into the crook of his arm and Hera’s hand a warm weight on his neck. That was one of his more embarrassing displays. For someone who once in a drunken stupor had pole danced with a pair of Nautolan strippers, that said something. There had been tentacles involved.

 

Hera’s whisper close to his ear pulled him the last bit of way into reality. “Better?”

 

“Hrmmm.”

 

“So…,” she said with a giddy quality to her voice, the childlike reverence and wonder he had seen in her eyes when he had saved her on board the Forager. “A Jedi...”

 

“For all it’s worth,” Kanan deadpanned with his face still safely hidden.

 

“I won’t betray you, you know?”

 

“I know.”

 

“Then why…,” Hera broke off, at a loss.

 

“Because,” Kanan said and straightened, mindful of his injuries this time. “It’s a death sentence.”

 

He leaned back to face her. It dislodged the hand she still had on his shoulder and suddenly he felt deprived and cold again. As if he could face it, the past and the future, if only Hera was there.

 

“I survived once, by sheer luck. I lived out of dumpsters for a year and slept in the rain, because I couldn’t dare to trust anyone and I made it. I was hunted like an animal, Hera,” Kanan’s voice rose. Not quite yelling, but some broken quality carried farther and deeper than he maybe wanted to. “They were my friends and they killed my master. They had me more than once. I stared down the barrel of a blaster waiting for my execution twice. ...but I made it. And I am not going back to that.”

 

Kanan took a deep breath and locked his gaze with hers. “Ever.”

 

Hera curled her nose in sympathy, then she nodded.

 

“Alright, love.”

 

And that was it.

She reached for the bandage on the table and gently pushed him back down, sprawled half before her on their much abused Dejarik table until she could comfortably reach his side to affix the patch to the wound.   

 

“What about your family?"

 

Hera bandaged the patch in place and with that done there wasn’t really anything left for her to do, but Kanan was not about to tell her that.

He would just sprawl over the Dejarik table, shivering gently, enjoying the soft haze of heavy painkillers and the faint pain from spasming muscles as the Bacta seeped into the wound.

Hera's hand painting slow circles on Kanan's back almost chased the pain away, replaced it by something warm and comfortable that had the question barely register.

 

"Your parents?" She repeated. "couldn't you have contacted them?"

 

Kanan shook his head and dropped his forehead on the arm resting on the table in front of him.

 

"Too dangerous. That would’ve just made them a target.” He shrugged and cursed himself yet again for trying. “And I don't know them. Rumor has it they were Jedi anyways. Or one of them. I don’t really know." At least that's what the archives had hinted at, the one time Kanan had dared to look.

 

"Aren't Jedi forbidden from... uh..." Her Lekku twitched uncormfortably at that train of thought and it made Kanan laugh, right before he winced and uncurled slowly to lean back and look at her.

 

"Trust me, Hera. Sex works very well with no attachment whatsoever."

 

A mute ‘no!’ droped her mouth open as her eyes popped into two comically rounds orbs with a shake of her head, before they narrowed into a mask of suspicion. 

Laughter hurt, but it hurt less than the thought of what he had lost.

 

“I don’t believe you!” Her shock was real, the disbelief a sweet reminder of all the things she hadn’t seen and hadn’t done that Kanan had only too willingly engaged in to forget. But that way lay pain and pain he had enough of right now. His heart hurt, a faint ache of longing, a soft caress of whispers.

 

_No death, yet the Force._

No memory, yet more alcohol.

 

“There are stories I could tell you…. Jedi are…” He stopped himself, waited for the heart rending pain, the panic attack that was bound to happen at saying it aloud, but there was only Hera, looking at him as if he held the secret to the universe and another faint pang of regret and the low hum of the Force in the back of his mind, filtering through his weakened body and his exhaustion.

 

“Jedi were the worst gossips in the galaxy. The stories I could tell you…”

 

“Weren’t you a little young for… that?”

 

 _Fourteen_ , his mind supplied. _I had just turned fourteen when they tried to execute me the first time._

 

“There’s an age restriction to gossip?” he deadpanned to the roll of Hera’s eyes.

 

Only as she got up the thought flashed in a flare of muted worry, that he went too far, joked too much when she wanted to be serious. Again.

But all she did was to get another glass of water and place it in front of him.

 

She stayed on the other side of the table after, bringing distance between them, because it got too close for her liking. Again.

She did that.

 

It was, he thought, as yet another shiver wrecked his body, unacceptable.

 

He needed Hera. He needed her close tonight to keep the ghosts at bay, to subdue fever born dreams and the fear that came so naturally with the memory of being hunted, of staring into the faces of friends, seeing hatred and the single minded drive to murder him.

He needed Hera sometimes more than he needed the air to breathe. More than she could ever know.

 

Screw the sex she didn’t want. Screw the shallow, cheap dreams of the woman under the pilot’s clothes that she didn’t deserve.  

He needed Hera’s heart and her ability to believe that everything was going to be alright.

He needed her hope.

 

And he would make do if she said no. And he would scream terror and pain into his pillow, but , damn, if he didn’t try to avoid that particular horror first.

 

Maybe one day things were going to be alright in truth even when they were not and the past swam too close to the surface, but for now Kanan Jarrus was a man with problems.

Sometimes he was just not equipped to face them alone.

 

“Hey, Hera… wanna see my lightsaber?”

 


End file.
